Loomio
Wed 31 Jul 2024 4:35PM

Organizing Circle Meeting: 2024 14 August (Wednesday) 1300 UTC

KT Kathe TB Public Seen by 8

ToDo list

  • @Kathe TB write recap from last meeting

  • @Kathe TB create agenda for this meeting

  • @Kathe TB Update backlog

  • @Flancian organize group to redesign registration

  • @Flancian set up time for TWG and OC meeting

  • @Flancian follow up on possible preprint for 'Fed Paper' with Erin and Darius

  • @Matt Noyes prep CWG with OC question for shared call

  • @Matt Noyes Collect calendar items

  • @Matt Noyes work up admin walk through for OC

  • @Andrew Escobar (Andres) · social.coop Finance Working Group Set up poll for FWG and OC

  • @Andrew Escobar (Andres) · social.coop Finance Working Group Follow up with TWC on domain handoff and billing

  • @Andrew Escobar (Andres) · social.coop Finance Working Group Schedule meeting with innovation coop and/or P6 and OC to talk about 'how to coop'

  • @Eduardo Mercovich Revise and draft onboarding email and wiki information for new registration

  • @Eduardo Mercovich Update calendar entry for this meeting to 1300 UTC

KT

Kathe TB Wed 31 Jul 2024 4:41PM

Agenda

The Organizing Circle for social.coop will meet 2024 14 August (Wednesday) 1300 - 1430 UTC. We will meet here: https://socialcoop.meet.coop/kat-aiw-mpv-6vv (the meeting may or may not be recorded). A tentative agenda is to be consented to at the start of the call:

1300 [5 min] ADMIN

1305 [10 min] Check in:

1315 [5 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

1320 [10 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

  • Call a round to check in with people

1330 [20 min] Updates from working circles

  • Finance

  • Tech

  • Community

  • Legal - defunct

1350 [5 min] Update: What was said by the group in active Loomio threads. Do we need to respond to anything or integrate something into our discussion?

1355 [25 min] Items to be consented at the start of the meeting

1420 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1425 [5 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

KT

Kathe TB Wed 31 Jul 2024 4:51PM

Backlog items

The items below are not on the active agenda but should be addressed at some point in the future:

Strategy questions

  1. Long term goals of operation (growth vs stewardship of mastodon instance vs community building vs ...)

  2. Financing priorities and framework for setting these

    • How do we provide a framework for the Finance WG to budget overall and help manage surplus?

  3. How do we deal with liability as an organization? Do we need to consider some kind of incorporation or legal entity? If so where? Merging Legal (LWG) and Finance (FWG)?

  4. How can we learn from other fediverse instances?

    1. Calls with MayFirst and P6

    2. Should we set up a conference or meet up of some flavor to help Federating the fediverse?

    3. Follow up on "Fed paper"

    4. Inspiration and lessons learned from MayFirst https://www.loomio.com/d/Yxz1ZqPR/conversation-with-mayfirst

Operations question

Maintenance of care

  1. How to support Tech working group and its members (cf. xy crisis driven by single maintainer)?

    • Should we offer bug bounties?

    • Set up meeting with tech working group

  2. How do we support community governance involvement?

  3. What is our current financial picture?

  4. What is our current volunteer burden?

    1. Compensation and effort tracking https://www.loomio.com/d/I1KJoBY4/compensation-in-organizing-circle

Process development

  1. OC membership and expansion https://www.loomio.com/d/TqwLjKsc/expanding-organizing-circle

  2. Check in on group condition, engagement level, look at moving forward with (a)synchronous engagement

  3. Ask for training on 'what it means to be an admin' to orientate new admins in Organizing Circle

  4. Annual patterns https://www.loomio.com/d/BtVCdq01/annual-rhythms-of-organizing-circle-

  5. OC history documentation

    1. still needs review and minor edits. https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle#Origin_of_the_group

  6. Can we better highlight how we moderate?

    1. CWG ops team background -- Onboarding: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Onboarding_New_Community_Working_Group_Ops_Team_Members, On call: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Guide-for-CWG-Ops-Team-%22On-Call%22, See also: https://www.loomio.com/d/4VJ6DUYx/how-to-respond-to-people-tooting-about-mental-health-crises-

Decisions to be reviewed in the future

https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy

  1. October 2024 (2 decisions up)

  2. February 2025 (1 decision up)

KT

Kathe TB Wed 14 Aug 2024 1:34PM

Notes

1300 [5 min] ADMIN

  • Who is here? Caitlin, Eduardo, Kathe, Marie, Matt

  • Does anyone need to leave early? Eduardo leaving at 1330 and stop at 1400

  • Confirm our next call on 28 August (Wednesday) 1300 UTC

  • Who is note taking? Matt

  • Who is facilitating? Kathe

1305 [10 min] Check in:

1315 [5 min] Agenda construction (potential items, topics discussed at previous meetings, work in progress)

  • Synthesis of meeting with Community working group

  • ??

1320 [10 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

  • Call a round to check in with people

  • Add admin walk through to the back log - KTB

1330 [20 min] Updates from working circles

  • Finance - planning a meeting, first in a while, will follow up on Andrew's (Andres?) questions

  • Tech - Eduardo in touch with Flan 

  • Community - 

  • discussions on report on anti-racism... 

  • Matt share info on moderation process and oboarding with Eduardo

  • Legal - defunct (merge into FWG?)

1350 [5 min] Update: What was said by the group in active Loomio threads. Do we need to respond to anything or integrate something into our discussion?

1355 [10 min] Update from Community Working Group

  • + Strong interest and centering on community building (internal and external)

    + Interest in UI/UX especially for onboarding

    + not overwhelmed or overburdened by moderation duties at the moment

    - Frustration with Loomio

  •     * votes... and then what?

  • * navigating threads is hard

  • - Recognize need for more DEI support

  • ! Two groups actually here: ops vs proactive community building. Historically you join a working group when you join social.coop

  • ? need for more defined domain/aims?

  • ? quarterly follow up?

1405 [15 min] Items to be consented at the start of the meeting

1420 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

  • Kathe: recap, notes copying over, backlog dev (add quarterly CWG follow up)

  • Matt: 

  • share info on CWG Ops Team with Eduardo (maybe have a call?), Marie also interested in supporting onboarding conversations

  • follow up on gathering calendar events with CWG ops team

  • Marie : Agenda, To-Do list, Reminder 

  • Caitlin: Play Catch-Up after camping and headcold. Follow up with Finance for a meeting date with OC. 

1330 [5 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

KT

Kathe TB Wed 14 Aug 2024 2:22PM

Recap

We had a very quick meeting (30 minutes!) that mostly focused on updates with several members needed to leave early.

Organizing Circle (subset) and Community Working Group members met on 1 August. Overall there is a strong interest in community building (both internally and externally) in this group, including UI/UX development for onboarding new members. There was a strong frustration with Loomio as a platform both in tracking the outcome of votes and in navigating large threads. There is a recognized need for more DEI support (there was a anti-racists reporting actively being dealt with at the time of the meeting). There were no signs that the group felt overburdened or overwhelmed with moderation duties at this time.

Historically social.coop required new members to join a working group, as a result Community Working Group is technically quite large and only a smaller core of people are actually operationally active. CWG and the Ops team was historically two groups, one focused on proactive community building and the other on moderation. The Ops team has effectively become CWG at this point and there is a desire to do more proactive community building moving forward. I (@Kathe TB) wonder if there might be a need for more clearly defined domains and aims for the group. There was broad support for a quarterly check in.

Working group updates

  • Community: Planning a report-out from recent anti-racism moderation, currently in draft. Met with Organizing Circle members (report out above)

  • Finance: Meeting currently in planning phase.

  • Tech: No one to give update on call.

  • Legal - defunct (considering merge with Finance)

There were no active Loomio discussions.